I fished the Holston below Cherokee for a couple of hours on Saturday and had pretty good luck. There was an intense fly hatch going on and I caught about 8 fish in 2 hours on a brown zebra (size 20 or so) that Hugh Hartsell ties. Didn't catch anything of tremendous size, average fish was 12 inches, but they were fat and fought with the power if a 16inch fish. This seems to be a theme on the SoHo to me, the fish fight much bigger than they are. It was great to get out and I am looking forward to the caddis hatch starting up this spring.

Did you fish below the dam, or at nances ferry? I was at nances ferry on sat. There was a big-time blackfly hatch and the fish were picking them out of the film for hours. You're right about those fish being abnormally powerful. the first one I caught, I was positive he was over 16". nope, he was about 10".

Trevor, I was up near the dam. The fish were starting to feed more heavily on the black flies around 1 pm, right when they were getting ready to open the dam up for an hour. I imagine the bite would have gotten better throughout the day.